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triumphant
        Richard merely sulked.
        “I trust I haven't stepped into a family argument,” Malmont said.
        “You have,” Richard said. “But at least you haven't supported this crazy notion of a family curse dating from 1860! If Freya merely needs love and stability, it is to counteract what her mother did to her-it is not to exorcise some wicked demon that has possessed her.”
        “What does it matter?” Cora asked. “Whether it is psychological or a curse-or a little of both. If love cures it, what does it matter?”
        “It matters a great deal!” Richard said. He dropped a fist on the table, made dishes rattle. “We will damage the child by helping her to nourish such superstitious folderol. There is no such thing as a Brucker family curse!”
        Almost as if on cue, the conversation was interrupted by the long, mournful howl of a large wolf…

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    4
        
        Jenny had come to the Brucker estate on Tuesday. Wednesday morning, the bad weather broke. The gray clouds tore apart and let the blue sky through around their jagged edges. By afternoon, the blue was dominant over the gray and the night's rain had mostly evaporated from the earth. The air was fresh. The gloom and the sense of impending disaster seemed to flee along with the storm.
        She spent most of the afternoon riding and walking a mare named Hollycross from one end of the grounds to the other. She found every corner beautiful, save for the dozen or so acres near the north-east corner of the Brucker land where limestone sinkholes pocked the earth like scars, where the trees were scraggly and awful and the field grass barely managed to keep a toehold in the heavily-limed soil.
        On Thursday, she rode Hollycross along the east border of the estate, watching the construction work on the superhighway which was not too distant. It displeased her to see nature ripped and destroyed, replaced with concrete and macadam.
        Lunch that day was pleasant, taken on the veranda behind the house with Cora, the breezes crisp. They talked of inconsequential things. The problem of Freya's comas seemed to have receded until Jenny could barely remember the intensity of the fear she had felt on her first night in this place.
        Near three o'clock, she took her nail kit down to the pond and perched upon an outgrowth of limestone near the shore from which she could watch the few, graceful ducks gliding across the placid waters. Her nails were a disgrace. They were chipped and cracked by her unaccustomed exercise of the past two days. She began to file them carefully, soon absorbed in the simple task.
        “You'll just chip them again,” a small voice said behind her.
        It startled Jenny so that she let her bottles of polish fall from her lap to the ground. Fortunately, neither had been opened.
        Frank appeared in the corner of her vision, rounding the rocks, Freya came close behind him. They were dressed in blue jeans and white teeshirts. They were perfectly beautiful children.
        “You shouldn't scare old people like me,” Jenny said. “I might have fainted on you. Then what would you have done?”
        “Got some lake water to throw on you,” Frank said. The idea seemed to appeal to the twins. They both smiled
        “Aunt Cora used to worry about her nails,” Frank said. “But if you ride a horse, you can't worry about sissy stuff like that.”
        “It isn't sissy stuff,” Freya said. It was the first time she had spoken. If there were to be a battle of the sexes here, she knew for certain which side she was on.
        “When Freya grows up,” Jenny said, “she'll take care of her nails, and all her boyfriends will be glad she looks so nice. It makes a girl prettier.”
        Jenny bent and retrieved the fallen bottles of polish, put them in her lap again. She was glad of the chance to talk to the twins. When she went before a class of twenty-five third graders this